


Flesh

by wantAwinchester



Category: Original Work
Genre: Art, Chicago (City), College, Gen, Professors, Psychological Horror, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Sculpture, Serial Killers, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 15:52:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3494114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wantAwinchester/pseuds/wantAwinchester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Ethan Samuels chooses his successor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flesh

**Author's Note:**

> This is an original short story that I wrote for a specific publisher's open call. The story won't be included in the anthology they are putting together so I am posting it here. Hopefully you'll like what you read.
> 
> This is not a fan fic, but I think it's a scary look at competition for a spot in medical school. As always betaed by lovesmesomepie. Thank you!

December in Chicago was his favorite time of year. The lake kept the air slightly warmer than the outlying suburbs which had proven to be the ideal temperature range for his art. The medium he worked with was the most malleable when it was chilled enough to give the cuts he made a precision edge that couldn’t be matched at other times of the year, even with air conditioning. 

Dr. Ethan Samuels walked through the quad at the University of Chicago, Circle Campus towards his office. He’d finished his last anatomy lab for the semester and just had one more lecture to give before the final which was to be held in two parts; one a practical with the cadavers they’d been working on laid out and marked with various questions and the other a traditional multiple choice exam. He always looked forward to the end of the first semester. His class was popular and always full at the start of the year but by the end of the semester the demanding nature of the topic as well as its professor weeded out approximately a third of the students. Another third wouldn’t make it through the exam leaving only the very best to move on to his advanced anatomy class in the spring.

The administration at UIC Circle had fought hard to get Dr. Samuels on staff as his name in their catalog attracted students with the highest potential, students who often had the means to pay for their tuition without relying on scholarships. They acknowledged that his teaching methods could be considered unduly harsh by some, but as one of the most published and most highly sought after professors of anatomy in the country they felt they could afford to give him a lot of leeway in how he taught and graded his classes. At the end of each year, the student with the highest grade in his class was offered a position as teaching assistant for the next year. 

Dr. Samuels had his eye on Danielle O’Connor as his prize winning student for the year. She was bright, asked insightful questions and was able to grasp even the most abstract concepts almost immediately. She was also beautiful. A former ballet student she had the long, lean muscles and inherent grace that a dance education gifted to even the worst students. Her caramel hair was still ballerina long and she wore it up which further accentuated the long line of her perfect neck and sharply defined collarbones. She was perfectly formed in every way, an ideal addition to his collection of brilliant post grad assistants.

“He likes you,” Kunal remarked to Danielle as they left the anatomy lab. “He can’t stop looking at you when we’re in lab.”

Danielle laughed, “He’s asexual if he’s anything. Half the student body male or female would do him in heartbeat and there’s never been even a hint of a rumor about him. The students who’ve taken his courses previously say he’s married to his research. He likes that I ask him tough questions, that’s all, he’s definitely not attracted to me.”

“I think you dismiss him too easily. Maybe he’s just never met the right girl….”

Danielle rolled her eyes and looked sideways at her friend.

“OK, OK or guy, whatever. Point is he could be holding out for something specific and my money says he’s found it in you. I’m not the only one who’s noticed,” Kunal stopped. He needed to turn here to catch the el, “ask around if you don’t believe me, the guy is definitely into you.”

“Whatever, Kunal, he’s too old for me anyway. Will you be at study group tomorrow?” 

“Yeah, I’ll see you there. Be careful going home, the streets are icy.” Kunal waved as he turned away. ‘Why was it the best looking people were usually the last ones to figure out how really attractive they were,’ he thought as he bounded up the stops to the el stop.

Danielle thought about the enigmatic Dr. Samuels as she walked the few blocks to her dorm. She wanted the teaching assistant position badly, she was a scholarship student and barely had enough money left over after paying for tuition, books and housing to afford anything else. Besides, if she was awarded the teaching position she could get practically anything she wanted from the top universities in the country and she wanted her own anatomy lab. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to see if Kunal was right. What was a brief affair with a professor to her if it ended up guaranteeing her future? It wasn’t like he wasn’t attractive. He was just remote, almost cold and she couldn’t imagine that he was any warmer in the sack, she shuddered at the thought.

It was a week later and Ethan was coming upstairs after he’d finished soothing his mistress, demanding creature that she was she didn’t tolerate being ignored even when it was for his work, when his bell rang. Still dressed in the permanently stained clothing he wore when attending to his muse he hesitated. 

The bell chimed again and her voice rang out, “Dr. Samuels? Are you home? I see lights. It’s me, Danielle, Danielle O’Connor.”

It was her, his chosen, but why was she here? He pulled his over shirt off and shoved it into the front closet. The rest of his dark clothing looked presentable even if not what he would have chosen to wear when entertaining a student in his home. He opened the door as she was turning to leave, “I’m sorry Danielle. I’m afraid you caught me while I was working on my latest sculpture. Please, come in and please excuse my appearance.”

“I’m so sorry to bother you at home.” Danielle took a deep breath and rushed through the rest of the speech she’d prepared, “I know the term is over but I had a few questions and I hoped we could go over them since we’re both here over the holiday break. If tonight’s inconvenient perhaps you could suggest another time?” It had taken every ounce of her courage to ring the bell. She’d gotten as far as the end of the path to his door more than once and turned away. She wasn’t necessarily afraid just unsure she was doing the right thing. 

“It’s no bother at all you just caught me off guard. Please come in,” Ethan held the door as she slipped past him, the smell of her shampoo piquing his interest. He took her coat, “Can I get you something to drink? I was just going to pour a glass of wine for myself.”

“Yes, thank you, Dr. Samuels. That would be lovely,” Danielle followed her host as he made his way to the back of the house. It was a typical city brownstone that had been renovated so that the downstairs had an open floor plan. She was pleased it would make her task that much easier.

“Ethan, please,” the professor responded as he handed her a glass of red wine. “This is a particularly fine cabernet, I hope you like it. Here’s to my top student.” They touched glasses and each sipped at the wine.

Danielle looked around the small sitting room off the kitchen, “This is quite good. May I see the label?”

“Of course,” Ethan left to get the bottle. “It’s a Beringer 2007 Private Reserve. You’ll note flavors of blackberry, cardamom and bittersweet cocoa accented by mouth-coating tannins and a particularly luscious finish. This is one of my personal favorites.”

Danielle turned the bottle in her hand before placing it on the coffee table, “It’s quite good, but I admit I’m not as educated in wine as you are.” She raised her glass and sipped at it again. “I had a couple of questions about the final, would you be willing to discuss them with me now that the grades have been posted?”

“You had a perfect score, but of course we can discuss your questions,” the professor leaned back in his chair; he was a little dizzy. He dismissed it since he hadn’t eaten yet.

“Oh, I’m not unhappy with my grade. I just wanted a little more information on a couple of the questions you asked; they seemed to be different from the others. Less academic and more…..esoteric or artistic in nature and I was curious about how you came to the decision to add them to the exam,” the student was focused on her professor’s eyes as she asked, ready to catch the slightest change in his demeanor.

“That would be questions…” Ethan shook his head to clear it and took another sip of wine, “I’m sorry Danielle, questions twenty-five, thirty-eight and forty-two, yes?” The room was really starting to telescope around him and he was fighting to keep his eyes open.

“That’s right Dr. Sam…I mean Ethan. The language you used in those particular questions was almost poetic in nature and very different from the hard science of the other questions asked,” Danielle raised her glass to her lips again which prompted the professor to do the same as he ran her words through his head trying to form a coherent reply.

The student took the glass from Ethan’s hand before he relaxed into unconsciousness and set it gently on the table. “Poor man, I know you’re overworked and that was a pretty heavy dose of ketamine I gave you, you nap while I show myself around,” Danielle immediately began to search through the rooms on the main floor looking for anything incriminating or salacious that she could use to guarantee her the position as teaching assistant at the end of the year. She’d decided there was no way she was sleeping her way into the position if there was a chance that she could blackmail her way there.

She searched the main and second floor without success and was sitting across from the sleeping man sipping the expensive wine, “There’s no way you’re this lily white, there’s got to be something you’re hiding. No one gets to the top without fudging the numbers along the way. Plus, there’s got to be a reason your TA’s never last through the first semester before transferring out to another university. I know you’re dirty, I just don’t know how.” She was frustrated and kicked her professor, hard. He moaned in his sleep, “You know if I can’t find it myself I’ll wake you up and make you help me. You won’t like that,” she kicked him again for good measure and drained her glass.

The fact that Danielle was a phenomenal anatomy student was easily explained if one had access to her true transcripts. She was on her third rotation through an advanced anatomy class with a cadaver lab, universities loved good students and she had made her way through three of the best. Her passion for the subject was in carving up the cadavers they were given for lab rather than the dry words in the textbooks. Peeling back the layers of skin, connective tissue, fat and muscle to reveal the skeletal structure underneath was almost her favorite thing, ever. There was something about the dead eyes staring at you while you worked to reveal their body’s secrets that made her hot. She often stayed late in the lab just talking to the dead bodies they were desecrating in the name of education, taunting them with how they’d ended up being stripped of their humanity for the likes of her and her fellow students. While thinking about what she’d done to her cadaver the week before her eyes fell on a door she didn’t think she’d opened.

The basement was finished and all the walls painted white with track lighting that was positioned to show each sculpture’s fine lines in high relief like they would be in a gallery. Danielle walked around the statues that had each been sculpted as if they were caught in action. There was a running back positioned to bob and weave, a runner caught mid-stride and a dancer en pointe in an arabesque among the finished pieces. Each was naked and their musculature was so lifelike that each sculpture looked as if a touch would bring them to life. 

They were beautiful and Danielle couldn’t resist running her hand down the back of the runner, feeling each muscle group flexed or relaxed as required to propel the runner forward. She expected to feel cool stone or ceramic under hand and was surprised by the flexibility of the medium he was using. It was very nearly skin-like in texture but perfectly smooth and blemish-free. Her mind raced. How did he do that, how did he get the pieces to seem so life-like?

Her curiosity aroused she made her way through the exhibit taking pictures with her phone, eventually stepping through another door which opened into the professor’s work area. Danielle’s eyes were immediately drawn to the stainless autopsy table on one end of the room. The enclosure had running water and a hose as well as some instruments that she wasn’t familiar with. The room was perfumed with exotic scents, almost like a spice market. She backed out of the autopsy enclosure and walked over to a desk and book shelf that contained volumes of hand written journals as well as texts on the Egyptian rite of mummification. She took a few more photos and sent the lot to her email before making a brief call. Behind a plastic curtain she found the professor’s latest projects.

Danielle immediately recognized that year’s TA. A scrawny but wiry young man named Daniel Boudart. His body had been positioned seated as if he was working at a computer and he was clearly dead but still wearing his original skin. “Is he using you as a model?” Danielle spoke out loud to the unfortunate young man. She shivered at the thought of being able to work with her own cadaver collection.

The other work in progress wasn’t anyone she recognized. It was a woman caught in the process of writing on a black or white board her arm extended above her head and her hand positioned as if to hold chalk or a marker. Half of her musculature had been exposed the other half was covered in…..was it skin? Danielle approached the sculpture and reached out to touch the woman’s arm.

“Ah, Danielle, I see you’ve stumbled on my work in progress,” Ethan parted the plastic curtain as he entered.

“Professor, I mean Ethan,” Danielle jerked her hand back and turned to face her professor. “I didn’t expect you to wake so soon.”

“A miscalculation, Danielle, I expect better from my top students.”

“Didn’t want to kill you…yet. Let’s talk,” Danielle walked past the stunned older man and sat at his desk. “Here’s how I see it, feel free to correct me where I go sideways. Brilliant but disturbed professor is driven to ‘sculpt’ only he has no talent, can’t see the figure hiding in the clay or stone waiting to be released. Isn’t that how Michaelangelo described his art?”

The professor nodded and sat on the floor, interested in where the conversation might be heading. “Please continue.”

“So the pathetic excuse for an artist needs to use models, but not just any models, right? Exceptional models, models whose bodies deserve to be preserved for the ages, models which are already perfect works of art even before you get to them. How am I doing?” Danielle sat back in the chair and opened the journal lying on the desk.

“I have talent,” he protested. “I’ve just chosen to express it a bit differently,” Ethan gestured toward his works in progress, “Instead of revealing the figure hiding in stone or clay I’m revealing the beauty hiding in flesh. I’m just using a different medium.”

“Oh look! I’m in your book. I guess I should be flattered that you find my form worthy of your art,” the young woman laughed at the confused look on her professor’s face. 

“You aren’t alarmed by that prospect?”

“Of course not because it isn’t going to happen, I’ve sent photographs of your ‘work’ to my email account and a note to a friend with my email password instructing him to go into my email if he doesn’t hear from me at least once every twenty-four hours for the next semester,” Danielle flashed her prettiest smile and gave Ethan time to digest what she’d just told him. She walked over to the autopsy enclosure and picked up one of the sharp instruments, “Here’s how it’s going to work, Ethan,” she emphasized his name as she approached him. “I’m not just your top student I’m also your private student. I want you to teach me how you take them, kill them, preserve them and then ‘sculpt’ them.”

“I’m not currently accepting apprentices.”

“Wrong answer, Ethan,” Danielle sat down in front of him again. “I wasn’t asking. I figure you can save me a lot of trial and error by showing me what you’ve learned. If you don’t, I’ll just use your research and figure it out on my own. You’ll be my first project.” She put a syringe on the desk, “It’s enough ketamine to put you down….for good this time.”

“You’ll never overpower me,” the professor laughed. “You’re cunning, but you’re just a little thing. I have at least eighty pounds and seven inches on you,” Ethan stood, he was easily 6’2”. 

Danielle laughed again, “You’re right of course. I probably can’t over power you alone, but I’m pretty sure the two of us can. Come on in, Diana.”

Ethan’s confidence dropped as Danielle’s identical twin walked through the door to his workroom, “Well, hello there Professor Samuels.” She moved behind him with an identical syringe in her hand. “I’m Dr. Diana O’Connor, veterinarian. We’ve met of course, but you wouldn’t know that.”

“Oh, I did make tiny mistake before,” Danielle had picked up her syringe and was standing next to Ethan as she spoke, “I won’t be your only private student. You’ll be teaching both of us everything you know.”

Diana handed her syringe to her sister and secured the professor’s hands and feet with zip ties and sat him in his desk chair. “The ties are just until we’re convinced you won’t run. We’re going to become such good friends!” 

As her twin secured Ethan to his chair, Danielle walked around the works in progress admiring again the psychotic brilliance that had created such a perfect method of preserving the perfection of the human body at work, rest and play.

___________________________________________  
The end of the spring semester was coming to a close and Ethan was desperate, the girls never left him alone, not even to shower or use the toilet. One of them was always on guard and they had enough evidence gathered to earn him the death penalty if they turned it over to the police. He had no proof of their involvement in his crimes and without it, who would believe that either one of the beautiful and brilliant women were actually sociopaths holding him hostage in order to learn his art first hand. He had long since stopped looking for a way to escape his situation and now hoped he’d be left alone long enough to kill himself before they did it for him.

Danielle smiled up at Kunal as they exited the last anatomy lecture of the year, “You’ve been doing brilliantly I think you’ve overtaken me in the class standings.”

Kunal shook his head, “I don’t think that’s possible, but I’d be happy coming in second. That should secure my place at any medical school.”

“You’re too modest by half. I really think you’ll make it. My attention’s been a little divided this semester. I haven’t really given anatomy my all,” Danielle smiled again. “It’s all I can do to keep up with my school work and my art.”

“I didn’t know you were an artist,” Kunal was surprised. He’d assumed, like the rest of the class, that Danielle lived and breathed anatomy, physiology, chemistry and the other classes that would guarantee them a place in medical school.

“Why don’t you come by my place tonight and I’ll show what I’ve been working on. It’s quite astonishing. I’m sure you’ll appreciate it.”

“I thought you lived on campus?”

“I did, but found there wasn’t enough room for my art. Please say you’ll come by. I’m dying to show you what I’m working on,” Danielle smiled again and batted her eyes, resisting the urge to roll them. “Say, eight o’clock? I have a very fine cabernet that I’ll open for the occasion.”

__________________________________________  
Epilogue

Kunal Patil’s body was found that autumn, along with a half a dozen others when police raided the Hyde Park brownstone owned by Professor Ethan Samuels. The Chicago Police Department had received information from an anonymous source that Samuels was responsible for the kidnap and murder of at least seven people including several University of Chicago students and professors over the last six years. In a newsreel reminiscent of the John Wayne Gacy case, police cars blocked the street as multiple body bags were carried out of the basement and into the waiting coroner’s vehicles. The body count wasn’t nearly as high as in the Gacy case, but the details when they were finally released were far more chilling.

Professor Samuels himself had been held in solitary confinement at the cook county jail awaiting trial. His court appointed attorney moved for a psych evaluation when his client wouldn’t budge from his story that his crimes had been facilitated by twins named Diana and Danielle O’Connor. The police dutifully searched public records for the women but came up empty. They found no trace of either woman, and Ethan Samuels was eventually judged as unfit to contribute to his own defense and sentenced to an institution for the criminally insane until he either recovered or died.

Dr. Brianna Samuels walked across the campus of the University of Washington, Puget Sound. It was her first semester teaching advanced anatomy with a lab that included work with cadavers and things were going beyond well. Her students were bright and dedicated. There was one in particular who stood out. He was tall, maybe 6’4” and ripped with shaggy brown hair and hazel, color changing eyes. She hoped he did well on her final. She’d decided she needed a teaching assistant and he totally fit the bill.

The End


End file.
